Have you ever?

Find out who is and who isn't pulling their weight at home. My handy domestic checklist of invisible shit...

Photo by Look Studio on Unsplash

Many years ago, (2018 to be precise because it’s recorded on my phone notes), something tipped me over a precipice. We’re talking a domestic precipice. Not a big, jaggedy cliff-face precipice with tumbling boulders hurtling past my ears. I can’t remember now exactly what it was that nudged me there. Maybe I had just mopped up some grass-infused cat sick from a carpet. Maybe I had spent fifteen minutes trying to pair up socks whose partners had yet again inexplicably gone missing in action. Maybe I had been wrestling with the putrid contents of a split food recycling bin thanks to helpful overstuffing of banana peel/ rejected pasta/ mashed potato by family members. Who knows. But what I do remember is getting out my phone and thinking:

‘RIGHT. THAT’S IT! I’M GOING TO SEE EXACTLY HOW MUCH OF MY TIME IS TAKEN UP DEALING WITH THIS SHIT ON TOP OF MY FULL TIME JOB.’

From that day on, (well for about the next six days until I got bored), I began documenting on my phone notes the amount of minutes that were being used up for every single ‘invisible’ thing I was doing around the house. Clearing away breakfast stuff /unloading the dishwasher: 9 minutes. Scraping hardened Marmite off a work surface: 3 minutes. Sourcing and wrapping up birthday present for classmate of a child: 58 mins. The list grew.

Fast forward a few years and I was asked to interview the fabulous British comedian and actor, Bridget Christie for her new C4 drama, The Change which she wrote and starred in. Imagine my surprise and deep-rooted empathy when I watched a preview ahead of our interview and saw Bridget’s character, Linda was keeping a chore ledger doing exactly the same thing - documenting all her expended minutes on thankless tasks she was carrying out in order to keep a household vaguely afloat, functioning and not encased in inches of grime.

‘I did this!’ I said excitedly to Bridget in our Zoom interview. ‘This is me! I am Linda! (Worth noting: Linda leaves her husband and teenage kids and goes to live in the Forest of Dean. Also worth noting, a few months after our interview I learnt Bridget had parted ways with her real-life husband, the comedian Stewart Lee. Your loss Stew).

Bridget Christie as Linda in The Change: Picture Channel 4

So what happened to my list? Did I present it as ‘evidence’ in some kind of fiery and brutal domestic showdown? Well no. Did I leave my partner and head for the hills or the Forest of Dean? Also no. But I do remember bringing my simmering resentment to the fore and having a conversation with my family about how everyone needed to pitch in more. A LOT more.

Things improved. To be fair, one child left home for university reducing household chaos and detritus, the other got the message that bowls of congealed Rice Krispies left for people, (ie me), to find in bedrooms was not acceptable and my partner began working from home meaning there was no escaping many of the domestic delights that were literally staring him in the face.

However, my extensive research into the division of household labour (reading stuff, observing stuff, talking to frazzled female friends), would indicate the lionesses’s share of ‘invisible’ and not so invisible chores still falls to women.

So Substack friends, for any of you living with a spouse, partner, housemates, other people, children big or small, pets…. I present you with my handy Have You Ever? checklist.

Feel free to share it with a loved/ not so-loved one/ bitterly resented one, or even better, read it out to them while they are sofa-bound, feet up trying to watch the latest episode of Department Q or something sports-related on TV and let's see who is really doing the majority of this shit.

Let’s go…

HAVE YOU EVER? ……

CLEANING…

• Cleaned a bath littered with leg shavings / pubic hairs that weren’t yours

• Cleaned a bath coated with hazardous/ oily/ glittery remnants of a bath bomb not used by you

• Tugged tangled clumps of wet hair from a plug hole

• Wiped away congealed toothpaste from taps/ basin/ floor area thanks to sloppy and poorly aimed teeth-cleaning of housemates/ family.

• De-scuzzed the crusty toothpaste coating from an electric toothbrush head belonging to a family member because you can’t bear to look at it anymore

• Cleaned the area around a door handle where endless grabby hands have left grubby marks

• Cleaned a light switch, same reason, same grubby, grabby hands

• Cleaned the bannisters of stairs, see above.

• Wiped skid marks from a toilet bowl that belonged to someone else, (the skid marks, not the toilet although that too).

• Hoovered.

• Really hoovered. Like lifted things-up-hoovered, moved-things-round-hoovered, gone behind-things-hoovered.

• Mopped a floor

• Emptied a hoover bag

• Knew that hoover bags existed.

• Emptied a cutlery tray and cleaned out the crumbs, debris and inexplicably accumulated items such as mini cocktail umbrellas, toothpicks, useless bottle stopper things, wooden spoons taken from M&S that no-one will ever have cause to use

• Dusted the base of a lamp

• Dusted the top of a picture frame or mirror

• Dusted the top of a door frame

• Dusted anything

• Do you know where the dusters live?

• Do you know that a duster is not the same as a dish cloth? Or a tea towel?

• Pulled out a sofa and removed everything from underneath including disembodied Lego heads, chocolate wrappers, Uno cards, batteries, hair slides, pen lids.

• Plumped up a sofa cushion, not just once, but every day

• Plumped up bed pillows (see above)

• Opened the curtains/ blinds in household rooms other than your bedroom to allow some light to enter your abode on a daily basis. (Ok, petty you may think but this stuff adds up).

• Made your shared bed every single morning (ie pulled the duvet into neat formation rather than leaving bunched up, just woken up, messy disarray. Again petty but like I said, it all adds up)

  

  My friend Louise gave me this as a birthday card. Spot on.

• Ironed any items not belonging to you

• Emptied the bins

• Emptied the food recycling bin

• Dealt with split food recycling bins because householders seem intent on playing a game called ‘how far can we stretch this flimsy bag thing before it breaks’

• Gone through the contents of a fridge dispensing with items more than 5 years past their best before dates.

• Cleaned a fridge or at the least, the vegetable drawer bit

• Cleaned around the base of a toilet

• Cleaned the grouting of the tiles in a shower

  WASHING AND CLOTHES…

• Added dishwasher salt to the dishwasher

• Know where you keep dishwasher salt

• Know that dishwasher salt is not the same as salt salt

• Changed the bedding / put on a clean duvet case / pillow cases

• Hung washing up in acceptable manner and not so it dries in a weird, crease-heavy formation and is speared with pointy bits from the drying rack

• Taken washing down

• Folded up washing and distributed it to householders.

• Spent 20 minutes pairing up socks. Damn socks. Don’t get me started on socks….

Actual image of the actual sock clips I bought thinking they would actually help keep socks united in their pairs.

• Bought special sock things so that people could actually PAIR up their own socks pre wash and they remain paired up.

• Abandoned pairy-up things due to lack of uptake by householders and decided that odd socks rule. No more life spent pairing. Pair your own, or don’t pair. Pairs? Who cares.

  RANDOM STUFF…

• Organised and weeded out a drawer containing things like phone chargers, staples, hardened Pritt-stick, instruction manuals for items bought 15 years ago, only for it to be in utter chaos a few days later

• Gone through 130 felt tips working out which ones need to be thrown away because they are old, tired, dried out and don’t function any more. (I’m talking about the felt tips although the ‘thrower’ may also feel old, tired, dried out and unable to function any more).

  

  Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

  CHILDREN…

• Spent 457 hours per year putting away children’s toys to allow access to a room/ pathway to a bed/ avoid death by small toy car left on stairs

• Bought clothes for your offspring

• Bought school uniforms or school shoes

• Sorted and dispensed of outgrown children’s clothes with trips to a charity shop/ online selling.

• Topped up dinner money on ParentPay

• What’s ParentPay? ….I rest my case M’Lud

• Replied to authorisations for school trips

• Been the transporter to after school swimming lessons/ music lessons/ football/ streetdance/ abseiling/ anything-that-keeps-them-busy classes

• Bought and organised the contents of children’s party bags

• Bought and wrapped presents for a child that wasn’t one of yours

  

  Swimming lessons. Oh what fun they are. Photo by Kevin Paes on Unsplash

• Replaced the sellotape in a sellotape holder

• Arranged ‘playdates’

• Spent hours, (probably days), of your life organising how to keep your kids occupied during the months of school holidays so you can do your job. The one that pays you money

• Booked a babysitter

• Ordered/ sewn / stuck name tapes into a garment

• Taken a child for a haircut

• Taken a child to the doctors or dentist

• Had to rearrange your entire working day when a child is off sick

• Made or sourced an outfit for World Book Day. Joy. Oh the Joy.

  PETS…

• Applied monthly flea treatment to a pet

• Topped up pet food so pet doesn’t wither and die

• Ordered new supplies of pet food so pet doesn’t wither and die.

• Arranged who will care for said pet when away on holiday so pet doesn’t wither and die

• Scrubbed off matted and unsightly cat hair from the entrance of a cat flap

• Taken pet to the vet (Possibly also having to use up extra precious minutes to source protective gardening gloves to lower a very angry and scratchy feline into a pet carrier).

  

  A cat (who possibly isn’t keen to go the vets) Photo by Maksim Baskakov on Unsplash

  RANDOMS…

• Watered a house plant

• Dusted a house plant because yes, these big-rubbery leaved guys can actually get dusty

• Bought and written a card for a relative of your partner/spouse

• Packed a suitcase for someone that wasn’t you remembering to include essentials such as life-saving inhalers, antihistamine, favourite toys

• Taken things that are left on the stairs up the stairs

• Done the weekly ‘Big Shop’

Time for a ‘Big Shop?’ Photo by Shalom Ejiofor on Unsplash

• Spent approx 5,475 minutes of your year working out what to buy, cook and eat for meals

• Spent an accumulated 11 days of your life combing a child’s hair (and your own) for nits/ head lice.

• Got so despondent and defeated with the relentless weekly grooming that you actually contemplated booking your kids into some pricey place an hour from your home called The Hairforce that you’d read about online - ‘Experts in nit and headlice control since 2006’ don’t you know.

So there we are. How did you score? How did your partner or spouse score?

What do we need to add to this list? I’m sure I’ve missed loads off…

And while I’m here, another question - in an age when we have Apps for every single eyelash flicker and lip-twitch of our lives, why is there no App for breaking down who’s doing what on the domestic chores- front? I want Strava for household chores. I want pie-charts for this ‘invisible shit’ stuff, I want time used, distance travelled, rooms entered, appliances made-use of, stress and frustration levels logged. What do you think? Would it be a go-er? Let me know what you think….

Thank you for reading x (Please do press the ‘like’ if you liked it as it helps other people on substack find it and it brings me a little jolt of joy when people like things)

And if you enjoyed this one you might like these ones I’ve written too

A poem for when your day is full of rage

Losing your mind when there is too much on your to do-list